Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology

Feminism and mysticism have always held a wary view of each other: feminists borrowed from Marx the belief that spirituality functions as a narcotic that anesthetizes the pain of oppression rather than harnessing it to fuel the engine of social change; religious leaders feared that committed social activists would lose their souls while saving the world. Beverly J. Lanzetta addresses these conflicts by analyzing two issues that split the values of feminism and mysticism: finding oneself and losing oneself in the Divine.